A Heart of Shame (The Redemption Saga Book 2)

by Kristen Banet

“He hates reading, and he’s feeling inadequate,” Elijah guessed, looking up at the ceiling. He pulled his hat off and dusted off invisible dirt. “I should have noticed it at breakfast. He hasn’t been so angry about learning anything in a long time.”

  “Why?” Zander scoffed. “No one here has ever judged him over his education level. That makes no fucking sense. And I’m more than willing to kick the shit out of anyone who does.”

  “It is Sawyer,” Vincent whispered. Zander glared at Vincent. Sawyer would never judge Quinn… right? “It’s Sawyer, isn’t it?”

  “Probably.” Elijah groaned. “He was just adjusting to her even being in the house, and on the property, and now she’s seeing his weakest area. None of us have told her…”

  That Quinn couldn’t read or write for most of his life. He used to be illiterate, and he was currently only at the reading level of maybe a seventh grader.

  They were working on it, but Quinn was in his mid-twenties and learning was slower at that age than when children normally learned these things. Hell, Quinn was older than Sawyer. They would have started when they first met him, but for nearly six months, he’d somehow kept it a secret from the team. Quinn had found every way to avoid exposing the issue.

  He was prickly over it, and Zander couldn’t blame him.

  “Fuck,” Zander mumbled. She could accidentally say something or ask Quinn something and really hit a soft spot. They had agreed it wasn’t her business before Atlanta, but now? If she was going to be here for five years, they needed her to know.

  “Who wants to tell her, so she knows not to step on Quinn’s toes over it?” Vincent looked around between them.

  They were all silent.

  “I will,” Zander spoke up when no one else did. “With back-up.”

  “Why are we so scared of telling her?” Jasper wondered.

  “It’s not her.” Elijah chuckled. “It’s Quinn’s reaction when he learns that she knows and finds out who told her.”

  “Duh,” Zander mocked Jasper, who swung a crutch at him. Zander winced as it nailed him in the thigh. “Fucking prick.”

  “Asshole,” Jasper growled in reply. “Don’t make me use these to beat you to death.”

  “Like you could,” Zander growled back, a smile beginning to form. He was always glad to see some fight in Jasper’s eyes. Or anyone’s eyes, really. Zander was a firm believer that a fight was always the best way to handle something.

  “Alright.” Vincent sighed. “You both can go.”

  “Fine,” Jasper groaned, standing up with the use of the crutches. “When do I get a new leg, Elijah? I’m already tired of these fucking things.”

  “Uh.” Elijah frowned. “I’ve got some sketches worked up… It might take me a couple weeks to make a prototype, though.”

  “Of all the things that could have happened,” Jasper mumbled.

  “You’re handling it better than most would,” Zander reminded him. “I mean, you were going into shock when it happened, but you made it through surgery and got up kicking. It could be worse.”

  “How can it be worse?” Jasper glared at him.

  “You could have lost more?” Zander shrugged, raising his hands in mock surrender.

  It made everyone in the room around him chuckle, and he grinned at Jasper, who couldn’t stop the snort of laughter.

  “You could have lost something I can’t give you a replacement for” Elijah added, looking around between them. “That’s much worse.” Zander’s eyes went wide at the possibility that Elijah was suggesting. Oh yeah, that’s a horrifying prospect. And a hilarious one.

  “Oh my god,” Jasper moaned, a smile lighting up his face as he shook his head. Zander grinned like a fool at his best friend. “Dick jokes! Every time, Elijah.”

  “See? Worse,” Zander teased.

  “I’m astounded by the maturity of my team,” Vincent groaned, covering a smile. “Astounded. The International Magi Police Organization should be honored to have you all in their service.”

  “Damn right!” Zander laughed. “Now, let’s go deal with Sawyer. Elijah can deal with Quinn, and Vincent can… hide in his office. Normal day. Come on, Jasper.”

  “I can find something to do, I’m sure,” Vincent muttered, narrowing his eyes on Zander. Zander took it as his time to leave.

  Zander and Jasper left with Elijah. They parted ways at the staircase with Elijah heading towards the back door instead of up to Sawyer’s room. When Zander and Jasper made it outside her door in the attic, they could hear the soft music she was playing. Even outside the door, there was now a chill, a line of cold that marked her space. Zander wondered if it was going to slowly take over the entire house.

  “Let’s get this over with,” Zander mumbled. “Who do you think is going to be angrier?”

  “Quinn or…?” Jasper frowned at him.

  “Quinn, over the fact that we told her, or Sawyer, over the fact that we didn’t.” Zander sighed.

  “Damn it.” Jasper groaned, reaching forward to knock on the door.

  5

  Sawyer

  She frowned at the knock on her door and answered it quickly. She’d been told that she would be left alone for the rest of the day to see how far she could get in the… school work. The idea of using that term made her feel stupid. She was doing high school homework, at the age of twenty-fucking-four.

  She frowned at Jasper and Zander. Were they here to explain the massive surge of magic that had rolled through the house? It was obvious who caused it, but Sawyer didn’t know why. She also wasn’t sure she wanted to. Quinn’s feral magic made her hair stand on end. Whatever pissed him off that much wasn’t something she really wanted to experience.

  “Guys,” she greeted them cautiously. “Want to come in?” She stepped out of the doorway and let Jasper move through while she was holding the door. She would be nice to him, he was on crutches. So after he was through, she released the door and watched Zander walk into it.

  It got a laugh out of both her and Jasper.

  “Damn it, Sawyer,” Zander growled, glaring at her as he came through the door. “Real cute.”

  “I know.” Sawyer chuckled. “It’s not often I get to be called cute. Decided to make sure that happened once today.” There was a moment of silence before the glare on Zander’s face turned into a sly smile. Sawyer realized her mistake immediately.

  “If you wanted to be called cute, there are other ways you can make that happen,” Zander growled, this time with a seductive edge. Sawyer’s next breath came out a little shallow and very airy. Zander had turned on the playboy act, and she had never liked when he got that glint in his eyes.

  But what a wonderful glint it was.

  “I’m sorry, Zander,” Sawyer huffed, trying to maintain some composure. “If I wanted to roll around and get sweaty with you, it would be on the mat, not in my bedsheet.”

  “We could fuck there, too.” Zander smirked.

  “I’ll just stab you, then.” Sawyer snorted. “If you think Jasper’s missing leg is bad, I can only imagine how you’ll feel about the body part I take from you.”

  “That’s just fucking mean—" Zander coughed out, shocked, but Jasper cut them both off.

  “That’s enough, you two.” Jasper groaned. Sawyer eyed him but found that he had a smile on his face. This was them. She and Zander at each other’s throats over some little shit, and Jasper putting his foot down between them. After everything, she could tell Jasper was happy they hadn’t lost this much. “We’re here to talk to you about something important.”

  “A Quinn thing?” she asked, going to sit at her desk. Her box of weapons and that old, cold mask still sat there. When neither of the guys responded, she sighed. “I could feel his magic roll through the house. I thought he was going to bring it down. So if you have something important, it must be a Quinn thing.”

  “Do… you want to start?” Zander whispered to Jasper, who nodded and then looked at her. She just leaned back in her chair as they both s
at on her bed. The sight was nostalgic, them hanging in a bedroom, waiting to gossip about the people they lived with.

  It was also painful in ways she needed to continue to ignore, if she had any sense of self-preservation. She watched Zander lean back, his shirt riding up, revealing those revolvers. Jasper got all the way onto her bed and made himself comfortable.

  It was a painfully good view of them. She would file it away, with a touch of guilt, into her ‘spank bank’. She needed to stop picking up weird shit from Elijah. He was turning her into a pervert.

  “Quinn can’t read,” Jasper finally said quickly, looking at her like he expected a bomb to go off.

  “Huh,” was Sawyer’s only vocalization.

  That wasn’t what she expected.

  “Well… he can, but he couldn’t when he first joined the team. We’ve gotten him, slowly, to some level of literacy. He gets… prickly over it on occasion. We’re trying to help him. He can speak nearly every Native American tongue of North America and a few from Central and South America… but he can’t read or write… any of them,” Jasper continued. “And we are really only working on English right now.”

  Sawyer continued to sit in silence and let the information sink in.

  “It took us a good month or so to convince him to speak to us using only English. Apparently, Druids will mix languages together because they come from all sorts of different cultures. They also tend to stick close to the area in which they were born and—"

  Sawyer raised a hand up to stop the rambling from Jasper. Thankfully, he heeded the sign.

  “How old is Quinn, again?” Sawyer frowned. One of them had told her at some point, but it was escaping her.

  “Twenty-five… is our best guess,” Zander groaned out.

  Sawyer stood up and walked to her door, opening it for them.

  “Thank you for letting me know, you can go now,” she said quickly. “I will do my best not to embarrass him. I know that’s why you’re telling me.”

  “Sawyer,” Zander sat up quickly. “You’re kicking us out?”

  “I’m going back to my own stuff,” Sawyer bit out. She needed to think, and she wanted to do it alone. “By the way, I’m probably capable of testing out of half this.”

  “You need to test out of it all at once, though.” Jasper sighed, standing up slowly. “Thanks for listening.”

  “Of course,” Sawyer whispered, patting Jasper’s chest when he stopped in front of her. He didn’t get moving again and she gave a heavy sigh. “Yes?”

  “Don’t hold it against him,” Jasper pressed, giving her an intense look. “He’s really very intelligent.”

  “I know. I would never hold it against him,” Sawyer kept her voice low. She did. She’d been through Quinn’s thorough survival training. She knew she had more to come now that she had magic back.

  Once they were gone, she closed the door and went to lock it. And remembered, again, that her bedroom door didn’t have a lock. She really needed to get that taken care of.

  She sat back down at her desk and frowned.

  Quinn couldn’t read. Or rather, read well.

  Did any of these guys have any experience in teaching someone to read? Why hadn’t they called for help or hired someone?

  She knew the answer: because Quinn could be dangerous to someone he didn’t trust or like. She didn’t know much about Quinn, but she knew that. He was animal. He was strange. He walked to a different beat. He was the child of a Druid. He was the strongest Magi on the continent.

  Quinn couldn’t read or write growing up.

  She had taught someone how to read before. The thought brought tears to her eyes. She’d taught a few children how to read. Henry was just the first, but not the last.

  She could do this where they may be struggling. She just hoped she didn’t get herself killed.

  But she could do this for them. Since the hospital, she’d been ridden hard by the idea that they were giving her this chance. The shame of what she could do and what she had been would always be there, even if she could give the world the middle fucking finger. She knew that, but she could give this knowledge to them, this expertise in a sense. This was one thing that wasn’t criminal that she could do. Something not covered in blood and death. This clean knowledge of understanding how to help someone learn.

  She could give Quinn this one thing.

  She jumped up from her seat and grabbed her box of photos. She would need a few of these. She riffled through it and found the best photos she could. They would possibly help her.

  The idea was taking a more solid shape.

  She left the room once she had four pictures held gently in her left hand. She went down the stairs double-time and didn’t bother knocking on the door to Elijah and Vincent’s office. She phased right through it, ignoring the noise inside at her sudden entrance.

  She eyed the bookshelf and looked for any books she thought would work.

  “What in the hell, Sawyer?” Vincent snarled.

  She finally looked over at him and noted his red cheeks and flustered appearance. The way he was tucked behind his desk like a child who was trying to hide something. She’d caught Charlie like this once or twice.

  “Were you jacking off?” she asked incredulously. Then she shook her head and held up her right hand. “Don’t answer that. I’m sorry for barging in. My fault. I’m just looking for something.” It really wasn’t her business if he was beating his meat in the middle of the afternoon while alone in his office.

  “And what, pray tell, could be so important for you that you just walked through my fucking door?” Vincent growled. His face was even redder after she spoke. Yup, she’d walked in on Vincent having a private moment to himself. Served him right for the time he interrupted her on that movie night, and he knew it. Prick. Attractive prick. Before she had known who he was related to, he occupied some of those imaginings. He probably still would, even now that she knew. She wondered perversely if he found her that attractive.

  “I’m looking for nature books. Plants, animals… science,” Sawyer told him, going back to the bookshelf. Chess and war. Strategy. “Why don’t you have anything like that?”

  “Jasper is the scientist,” Vincent snapped in embarrassment. “Not me. Why?”

  Sawyer thought about it for a moment. She should tell him.

  “I’m going to teach Quinn to read,” she sighed. She watched his anger at her intrusion crumbled. She watched his face become an unreadable mask of cold. This was the Vincent she knew best. This closed-off, cunning man who wants to know things.

  “Oh, really?” he whispered, a chill on his voice. Ice cold.

  “Yes,” she whispered back, giving herself the same deadly cold. Hers was better.

  “How are you thinking you can succeed where we have had so much trouble?” he asked, his eyes growing angry again.

  “Because I’ve taught children to read before,” she answered, not breaking eye contact. She knew he was feeling protective over Quinn. She had a feeling all the guys did in some ways. Quinn was turning out to be the most treasured member of the team. “What’s his current reading level? I know you must have gotten him started.”

  “Middle school, would be the United States standard. Maybe seventh grade by testing,” he told her. He was softer this time, that deep pain sneaking through. “Sawyer, don’t overstep your bounds.”

  “I can do this, Vincent,” she hissed.

  “How are you so sure?” he growled back.

  “Because I taught Henry how to read, and no one will ever be as difficult as he was,” Sawyer mumbled. She heard a choked sound from him at Henry’s name. “Then I taught four children after him, ones whose parents wouldn’t help, whose parents couldn’t be bothered.”

  “Damn you,” he snarled. She couldn’t tell if he was pissed off, hurt, or some combination of both. It happened every time Henry was even mentioned. “Jasper has science books for whatever your heart desires. Get out. If he tries to kill you, none of us can
stop him.”

  She didn’t respond because she knew how stupidly dangerous this was. She just left because it wasn’t something she was going to acknowledge. She went immediately into Jasper and Zander’s office, startling them both. She had the courage to do it now, and she needed to use that courage. She remembered how defensive he was at breakfast. This could go horribly wrong. She was about to try and teach a wild animal a new trick, and it was likely he could tear her arm off for it.

  “Science books, of any age range. Preferably high school level,” she rambled off quickly. “Now.”

  “Okay…” Jasper mumbled, looking around. He rolled around in his chair to collect books. She watched him stack some books up, all well-read and worn from age and use. Perfect. “Sawyer…”

  “Don’t,” she demanded. She was feeling raw. She needed a moment where someone didn’t question her again before she tried this.

  Quinn was in his mid-twenties, and he couldn’t fucking read. She could help him. She knew she could, and damn it, she was going to. Quinn was going to be hard enough, she didn’t need every other man in the testosterhole she lived in questioning her at every turn. That was a word, right? A hole of testosterone. If it wasn’t before, it was now, she decided.

  She snatched the books quickly when Jasper was done. She didn’t say anything as she left, phasing through the door. She couldn’t be bothered to open or close anything at the moment. She looked down at the books she had and crossed off two of the six as options. She wasn’t going to make Quinn read physics.

  She passed Elijah at the back door, who stuttered at her sudden appearance. She ignored him, phased through the door, and immediately sublimated once she was outside.

  She could change anything she was holding and wearing into smoke. Magic was neat like that, so she wasn’t trudging through the woods with several textbooks.

  Why hadn’t the guys tried this? Her idea worked with younger children. Many times, children had a hard time learning to read because the subject matter wasn’t interesting enough for them to become engaged. Quinn was by no means a young child, but he had an air of inhuman about him. Maybe this could help. Maybe the simple approach was the best one.